Connecting the Dots

Call them satellite churches or the multisite model, houses of worship have turned in large numbers to what many regard as the antithesis of the mega-church approach to hosting expanding congregations.

Not surprisingly, the multisite model has created its own set of AV technology challenges and solutions....

Meeting on Sundays and in some cases other days of the week at locations as close together as the same neighborhood or as distant as the next county, one website that follows the phenomenon estimates that more than 8,000 churches have embraced growth via adding multiple new locations. Outreach Magazine declared in 2007 that the multisite model is no longer a trend, but the “new normal.” Multisite church pioneer Jim Tomberlin of MultiSite Solutions in Scottsdale, Ariz., predicted that by 2014, an estimated 5 million people—15% of Protestant churchgoers—will attend a multisite church on any given weekend across North America.Not surprisingly, the multisite model has created its own set of AV technology challenges and solutions. For instance, the desire to make the worship experience feel as unified and seamless as possible has led churches to experiment with a number of ways to transport the core event of each service, the sermon by the lead pastor, from the main church to the satellite locations.

These range from “sneakernet”—transporting physical media such as a DVD by foot or by car to other locations—to real-time or minimally buffered HD streaming. Should churches buy the exact same AVL brands and products as those used in the main church for each location or should technology choices be specific to the needs of each site? These and other questions are ones that AV systems integrators grapple with for their house of worship clients.

Southlake, Texas’s Gateway Church has a sizable control room that readily handles the 16 channels of audio that can be embedded in SDI video. Image by Parkway Electric.

Solutions Across the Board

“Solutions really vary with each individual church,” says Gary Zandstra, HOW specialist at Parkway Electric in Holland, Mich. “The biggest question is video—how do you get [the content] from the main church to the other locations? That depends on a number of factors, including the budget, the level of technical expertise and the culture of each congregation.”Zandstra says moving physical media around is a simple and effective solution for many churches that have Saturday evening services. At the other end of the spectrum, Ben Cating, senior consultant at Dallas-area AV integrator Idibri, says real-time or near-live HD streaming is becoming more popular as costs come down and services such as Ustream offer more comprehensive streaming packages. Using an encoding device—he usually recommends the Imagine Communications Selenio X50 encoder—the satellite location can synchronize its service with the main church’s sermon, with delays of as little as five seconds. “The encoder [at the satellite location] is recording the streamed sermon as it comes in, but by putting it in a buffer it can also play the sermon at the same time, from anywhere from five seconds to 30 minutes later,” he explains. “That lets the worship bands at each location synch up, as well. What you’re really trying to do is give everyone everywhere the sense [that] they are part of the same event.”

(It’s worth noting that, according to Multisite Solutions, only half of all multisite churches use video to deliver their sermons. The other half utilizes live, in-person teaching models.)To further achieve that effect, Zandstra says that while AV is important, it’s also crucial that each church’s set has a similar look and feel, including set design and stage dressing. “This is what people will see on the screen, so if the sets and the décor are very similar, it adds to the sense of being there,” he says.

#As important, though, is having a Plan B—backup content in case the stream goes down for any reason or if packet loss begins to create an unwatchable experience on screen. “We suggested to clients that they have the pastor record an original sermon or two when the sanctuary is empty, so that there’s something fresh to go to in the event the stream were to fail,” says Cating. He adds that satellite locations can also revert to the online version of the stream, the one used for Internet distribution of the entire service, if the HD sermon feed to the projectors fails. However, be prepared for a significant difference in image quality from the HD feed, which can be as high as 20 MB, to the more 1 to 2 MB of a typical consumer broadband connection.

Who says satellite churches have to be small? The 1,200-seat worship center in the new Crossing Church, in Chesterfield, Mo., is interactively connected to the main church’s other campuses. Images by Idibri.

Ensuring a Good Fit

One of the major considerations for satellite churches across all AVL systems is whether to base equipment choices solely on the needs of each location or to choose the same brands and products consistently for each site. The former will ensure a good fit between the equipment and the needs of the individual rooms; the latter provides the operational consistency desirable for the largely volunteer staffs that run the systems and offers efficiency and cost-effectiveness for maintenance and repair. Understandably, most AV integrators try to achieve elements of both.“We suggest trying to standardize around the brands rather than the individual products,” says Zandstra. Thus, where a large sanctuary might use, for instance, a JBL VRX line array sound system, a smaller subsidiary church site may be better served by a rigid compact array, such as JBL’s CBT columnar array. (While major systems manufacturers have become more vertically diverse—for instance, JBL’s parent company Harman Professional recently acquired both Martin Lighting and control system maker AMX—not every brand might have every specific product type each location may need.) Zandstra says some churches take this approach to substantial lengths, noting one Michigan church that switched out its smorgasbord of Avid, Yamaha and other audio console brands to standardize around one brand in all locations. He says they did it for all of the reasons listed above, particularly to allow volunteers to move between locations and still find a familiar console interface to operate at each. But, he adds, since the church’s musicians frequently also do the same, they chose Allen & Heath desks for their integrated ME-1 personal monitor mixers so that band members would be equally comfortable in all locations. “The expectation is that a move like that will make sense because of the savings that come from improved efficiencies in operation and maintenance in the long run,” he explains.

Trying New Approaches

Cating cites one church, Watermark in Dallas, which has developed an interesting model for starting their satellite locations and outfitting their AV. The church, which currently has a Fort Worth campus and will open a campus in Plano in the near future, uses what he calls an “incubator approach” — setting up a large room on its existing campus and planting the new church there, inviting residents of the proposed new location to come and get familiar with the pastors and message. Part focus group, part off-site assembly model, the new satellite begins developing its themes while its tech team works on what systems it will use. Cating says the idea of sticking with a handful of brands, especially ones that have good vertical diversity, works well for this concept. “The speakers and projectors are usually the only elements that will change from site to site, because each room’s size and dimensions will be different,” he says. “We’ll use the same brand of projector, though, so we can have the same kind of lamps. Otherwise, they’ll all have the same audio consoles and lights.”One component that goes into every location’s systems design is a Clear-Com VOIP intercom system, which in combination with near-real-time HD streaming is used to connect all of the locations, further coordinating synchronization of the sermon in each church. However, Cating says he hasn’t seen widespread use of digital audio networking in satellite-church systems yet. “SDI video has up to 16 channels of audio embedded with the video, and the [streamed] audio is almost always just stereo or mono—just the sermon,” he says. “But some larger churches, such as Gateway Church (in Southlake, Texas) and Prestonwood North Church (Prosper, Texas), have the capability to transport 24 channels of audio.”

(As streaming and networking continue to evolve, it’s theoretically feasible to send an entire service, including band and choir, via broadband. However, most of the integrators and their clients we spoke with say that live music at the satellite location provides a more intimate context to sermons delivered remotely.)The multisite trend is not showing any signs of abating. If anything, it will likely accelerate as Americans move back into the urban cores they fled 35 years ago. Houses of worship are following them there, bringing with them the more refined strategies tools of the age.